Let's face it -- we were ALL involved in self-deception. You had to be to stay involved. But for me, I think idealism made it easier to do that.

I would like to dedicate this to Jethro Cadbury, the one real premie friendship of mine that has lasted over the decades, for me he is mr constant in his search for truth and his committment to the intensity and quality of the moment. So heart warming to see you continuing your journey outside of the cult Jed. And for introducing me to ex-premie.org and the quirky culture surrounding it.I would also like to thank those involved in this site's production and continuance, but especially Jean-Michel for describing the historical circumstances that the cult was born in, and from which Shri Hans and gm stole so much, and lyingly sold as uniquely their own.

The first part of this journey was a post I put up on the ex-premie forum, in a thread about the part of lila and the naivete, of my self and all the premies, in our involvement with der guru. A synopsis of my whole time around gm/k/dlm/ev is after that post.

The reason this post is the lead part of my journey is that I'm certain that the whole fake edifice that gm constructed, would have blown apart like a pack of cards in the wind without the lila concept, it was the binder for everything. Our hippy naivete and intellectual laziness, the 'it's all about feelings man' anti-analysis strand of the sixties, which was so disastrous, was the main reason we wasted SO much of our lives on or around a really third rate scoundrel. No wonder the punk/traveller scene happened.

I have made some minor grammatical changes, and expanded some parts of the post that weren't entirely clear before, but in essence this post is the same as before.

'The self-deception of ashramees that I was referring to here was relating to satsang. Except for a very short period around the time I "got" k, the only contact I had with anything official was at satsang. At satsang it was painfully obvious that people were being dishonest to a large degree. My idealism related to knowlege, gm was very much secondary. Satsang, I took to be, should be interpreted literally, as the company of truth. The company of truth I took to be emotional honesty, as well as an expression of the deepest spiritual experience, all connected to the 'one love' underlying reality.

Most ashram based satsangs left me feeling very sad and emotionally distraught. I could not understand why, if people were having this experience the same as me, they were playing power games, lying and trying to project what "should" be said, rather than expressing an honest description of their realities.

In community satsangs, which could be very dour and depressing, at least people tended to be more honest about their experiences, even if in the majority of instances they were describing their lack of experiences and the difficulties they were having with living.

The one period that I exempt from this description was 76-77 when suddenly everyone started to talk honestly. I loved that period. But the fact that it lasted for such a short period of time, and obviously was stopped by gm, not the premies, started to make me doubt his intentions or abilities. Before then I thought he was just shy & naive on one level, if a bit abusive at times, and completely absolved him of responsibility for all the craziness.

It did lead to one major problem for me regarding m.
As with all of us, we could only justify the chaos and m's uselessness by resorting to the concept of lila. But for a number of us who were outside of the org, having strong meditation experiences, we had to resort to using a second-order lila concept.
Not only was there some cosmic lila going on, but even within his followers there was another lila, how else could I justify to myself the obvious lack of experience of that one love reality that his followers, the very people who should embody the power of knowledge, were stuck in.

So I justified to myself that shramers were obviously in the ashrams because they needed protecting. The problems this justification caused for me in terms of spiritual arrogance is frightening, especially when mixed in with my strong meditation experiences. I know a number of people who took the same stance.
I assumed everyone involved saw this whole planet as a sick joke. If there was a god, a concept I always had difficulties grasping, or if there was any kind of consciousness in some cosmic ground, it could only allow the continual suffering of the human race throughout all history because there was something that took precedence over that suffering, however hard I found this.

But the biggest black joke for me was that the one person who probably had an answer/solution to this, was running something that was producing farcical results. And the closer those people were to that person the more fucked up they appeared to be. Yet here I was having at last found a way to access the experiences and feeling of connectedness to a love that was irrestible through meditating, that I had also experienced on acid, and had been searching for for over three years. So I saw the claims for k that gm was making, as justified, even though everything else around him appeared to negate this.

The only way I could rationalize it was that the org existed as a place of protection for people unable to cope in the real world, and that was why gm had set them up. The organizational chaos I rationalized by thinking that it was an irrelevance in some greater long-term lila, the purpose of which I had no understanding of. Obviously people were not experiencing knowledge, so they were not ready for that experience yet. That is where the spiritual arrogance manifested for me.

But this was in essence, no different to the attitude that acid-taking grateful dead followers had already reached long before gm turned up. That was why the rumours spread about everyone who was at the '71 glastonbury festival. GM gave satsang at the festival to the core group of british acid head hippies.

After 'receiving' knowledge I was told this rumour, that everyone who was there was supposedly going to receive knowledge, and they were like some form of divine illuminati, which is how we were able to stay in meditation when gm was giving satsang, and would only hear, and be moved, by the higher level message behind the main message of guru sell. Not difficult really, because over a period of time gm would cover just about any spiritual viewpoint and angle, many of which were quite often in conflict. The only way I could see to deal with that, was by letting my own feelings guide me through to those bits I was supposed to be hearing, the deep stuff , and avoid the guru sell agya part of his message.

Thanks for pulling this out of me & aplogies for it being so long. Think it is the first time I've ever verbalized it to anyone who did not see things in a similar way. I hope also that my comments are not seen as an attack on ex-ashramees. I do not blame them in the least now, think we know who I feel is responsible for the whole house of cards.

Everyones route in was very different. That is one of the reasons I've been astonished by the background details and the understanding of the reasons and pressures why people were the way they were then. When you see the quality of the people here, and know that the people I had problems back then with, were from similar backgrounds, there is only one door that bears responsibility for all the damage.'

My Journey Around GM/K by dates.

1970 - first take acid and am blown away by my experience of a reality behind this normal reality, which was coherently connected by a love that was universal.

When in that experience/space, and I was either there or not, everything made total sense in terms of the true meaning and purpose of life, and when in those experiences I felt wonderful. My body felt connected and alive, sensitive to the moment in exactly the way those sportsmen describe when they are 'in the zone'.

This was best described in certain songs by the Grateful Dead, The Incredible String Band, Mighty Baby etc, a hidden world that hardly anyone knew was there.

But over the next two years my mind got stretched too far and I was in danger of losing it.
I stopped taking acid, and was no longer able to access that experience.

My search began.
That experience was the only thing that made any sense to me, everything else about the human race seemed completely fucked, and it was totally obvious to me that we would destroy this planet unless there was an absolutely TOTAL change of consciousness in the human race.

So my search was on, to enable me to re-connect to that orgasmic oneness experience, and to do my bit to save this planet.

I was alienated from the mainstream religions, apart from Buddhism, but I could not find anywhere in Buddhism that would give me a good chance to get to this experience fast, they were talking lifetimes, if ever, apart from zen buddhism and I didn't like the official zen routes I came across.

I wanted this experience, and I wanted it NOW, and I was not prepared to go the shamanic route and start taking drugs again, however sacred the context.

So I started checking out gurus, spiritual orgs and humanistic psychology where it was related to ecstatic experiences, the only places where that kind of ecstatic bliss was talked about.

The best way of tracking down that experience for myself seemed to be to find people following a route or practice who did have that experience. Naive hippy that I was, I was Essex boy enough to know that lots of people say they are having similar cosmic experiences to what I was after, but could be lying/fooling themselves or might be on the wrong route for me to access it.

So in all the groups I encountered I grilled people incessantly while avoiding the hard sell like the plague.

I finally met someone who I felt was having these experiences, we spent months going for very long walks where I grilled her about her experience.

I had met premies before but they obviously were nowhere near what I was after, and their guru was obviously a fraud, I spent ages trying to dissuade a friend that the boy guru was obviously a fraud and that she was just spouting words, but of all things her mother became involved, and she was having the genuine article, I believed, after my months of grilling her.

Once I felt I would also be able to access that experience, I was going for it totally, everything else, career, partners etc were a complete irrelevance.

The guru existed solely as the route to me getting k. The guru route itself I felt was another number, and not mine.
Because this person was getting the mainstay of her experience from meditation, the guru seemed to me to exist solely to help people meditate better, especially when they were having problems letting go to that experience because of ego blocks, fear etc.

While on thr route to k, I remember that I always refused to ask for k, the mahatmas seemed to use that as a way of disempowering people, and with the background of self-worth my mother had instilled in me, I refused to be party to any such game. I used to go to the aspirant meetings regularly and one day found myself on a knowledge session without having to beg for it. We went to the room for k at the Palace of Peace after satsang one evening, at about 10 o'clock at night. By 3 in the morning the k session still hadn't started, some kind of mind game tester was going on. Around 5am it started.

I remember going home on the underground during the rush hour and their was a distinct feeling that something had shifted in my head, like a chemical change. Neither during the session nor after did I have any cosmic experiences.

For the first six months I had great difficulty meditating, I couldn't do more than five or ten minutes, my thoughts were all over the place. I decided to discipline myself by trying to sit for one minute longer on the bad days, and hoped I could build up my time meditating over the months. After six months or so, and even though I was still not having any grand experiences, except once with 'music', I did feel different in myself, not massively, but noticeable enough to me.

I felt confident that I was starting to move towards 'that space'.

Within the year I was comfortably doing half hour sessions morning and night, and sometimes during the day, while practicing holy name, a warm glowy feeling would kick in.

After a year something was happening with the light technique. My experiences were getting a bit 'zappy'.

With nectar I felt my ability to focus/concentrate on things in general was being affected gently. I was getting no nectar, but occasionally a sweet taste was there, no big deal, but better than pleasant, again like a gentle warm glow, but that was only occasional.

Music was not really happening at all, I got plenty of background noise type sounds except for once which was mind blowing. The background noises sounded like random brain stuff to me & were an irrelevance, the day I experienced that note was very different.

This happened very early after 'getting' k. From nowhere this note kicked in which definitely gave me a good feeling, and the more I went into this, the feeling increased. Suddenly, and I saw this visually as well, ( which was like a sine wave), I suddenly felt like a magnifying glass, and as I did I saw that the note wasn't one note. but many notes joined together. I kept slipping into different layers where each note was composed of other notes, it was very much like a fractal pattern in its structure and the way you could go into it. As I heard these many notes, I had this feeling like an electric surge go through my whole body. I reached a point where this experience was so intense I could no longer cope with it. It suddenly stopped.

Holy name was gentle, pulsy, but nothing grand, it did feel like the binder for the group of techniques.

After about a year I felt something had shifted, and I'd gone through a barrier. This feeling of exploring a level, and then after a period of time kicking into another level, was a recurring cycle of my meditation practice. I was now meditating for an hour, no sweat. Sometimes an hour and a half, even occasional two hour sessions.

Ninety percent of my meditations were now a total pleasure, quite often verging on ecstatic. The only times that didn't happen, were when I forced myself to meditate when I didn't want to. These times only happened when I began to absorb gm/premie sales pressure to conform to some norm, even though I knew from psychology and the taoist and some zen buddhist philosophies that this would mostly be counter productive.

Light technique was so strong I no longer used the finger technique, which I had adapted anyway because of my small hands.

I now was having the experiences directly. I would experience huge energy levels, regular surges, my body would feel like I was being stretched, I was getting gorgeous feelings. I know it improved my posture.

Music I did less, but even though I was hearing nothing but background 'noise', which wasn't that attractive, I was getting milder energy surges through my head from ear to ear.

Nectar was now a good feeling, with the sweet taste there occasionally, and very occasionally this huge lump of gumph would appear in my mouth very quickly, which was nothing short of ecstatic in its effect. I never got this anywhere near as often as I wanted.

Holy name was starting to get stronger, that pulse feeling which would rise to my head when I breathed in, and go down to the bottom of my spine when I breathed out, although not stunning in it's sweetness, was having a marked effect on my overall body feeling in a general way. Outside of the four technique formal meditation, I was starting to practice it and nectar for long periods during the day, and the random thoughts were definitely reducing.

I was starting to feel quite tripped out most of the time. When I had powerful light surges in formal meditation, on coming back to 'normal' reality it took a while to return, but after a quarter of an hour or so chilling out, my energy levels would feel phenomenal. By a year and a half of practicing I felt stoned most of the time, and would have a day or two a week where I felt like I was tripping, it wasn't exactly the same as acid, but close, like a sister version.

Alongside all these changes I felt I was being guided by some cosmic connectedness, that I did not associate with gm.

During this period, I was not working during the first few years of getting k, meditation was my career, I was trying not to control anything, just go with the flow. During this whole period, I was going to satsang, and avoiding those places where you were pressured into giving satsang. I would occasionally gain a buzz from odd individual satsangs, usually where people were having similar experiences to myself, but in general I was having a bad time around premies, especially the social pressure to conform to some premie mentality.

I avoided official service like the plague, I wanted to do the DUO type service, going to hospitals etc, but I was having such difficulties being around premies that it never happened.

In late 75 GM gave one of those satsangs where he gets very heavy, I had great difficulty with it, thought it was very abusive, any chance of me becoming a total premie drone, which was already very slim, was lost. Although going to all the festivals in britain, I stopped going to any abroad after that satsang of his. I just focused on meditating mostly. I starting going to, and giving satsang 76-77 when honesty was suddenly on the agenda, and cut down drastically when it stopped.

This carried on til 85, when everything got very strong in meditation, when some very trippy states were getting activated.

Some very weird stuff was also starting to happen then. One day I heard this screaming like some animal was being attacked. I could not tell where the sound was coming from. I rushed downstairs and into the garden. Nothing. As I came back in, the screaming noise started again. As I climbed the stairs it was so loud it was hurting my head. I opened the lounge door and the cat from downstairs, who regularly visited my partner and myself, was wapping this moth. Each time the paw hit the moth I heard this huge scream. After absorbing what was going on and stopping her, the screaming stopped.

Another time I was in a Hare Krishna restaurant with my mum, I was feeling very trippy and gorgeous. She was talking and as she talked I saw this sine wave leave her body, go across the room to where the customers were waiting to pay, and as it reached the person paying it disappeared and he dropped his tray of food on the floor, and was completely bemused as to why it had happened.

Another time I was on an underground train with a friend, I said to her 'if that cosmic consciousness wanted to shut down this section of the northern line, no problem.' Shortly after an announcement was made that this whole section of the northern line had had a power failure.

Quite often I would just say whatever felt right and blow people out because it was what they were thinking.

I could recount an endless stream of odd experiences like these, most of which I had no explanation for, and could see no point to.
By 78 I was vegan, by 85 a raw food vegan. I had no doubt that this, combined with the meditation techniques, were producing major chemical changes in my body.

As for the weird experiences, I could only think by 85 that I was starting to access some quantum level of reality that by-passed normal reality modes. In the mid seventies I would have probably ascribed them to god's grace, maharaji's grace, cosmic consciousness, by 85 I knew I was generating this stuff myself. This combined with the fact that so few premies seemed to be having the experiences I was having, and their numbers were not increasing, together with my increasing doubts about the org's dlm/ev, which just seemed completely fucked up, meant I was starting to question gm's validity on a number of levels. This even in spite of the success of k for me, which I still saw as magically passed down over the ages. It was so obvious that he had no idea how to help people integrate k into their lives, the pressure stuff was so obviously bound to be counter productive and fill people with guilt.

Lila covered it for me for a long time, what did I know etc etc, and the fact that genuine humility seemed to be a clear ingredient in the quality of my experiences. Whenever I got too confident/arrogant, something major would blow up in my face.

By 87 I was hardly ever going to programs or satsang, but once I can remember getting into a debate with Irene Hall where I pointed out the org's chaos, and the counter productiveness of the pressured conformity and guilt, and her reactions were quite instructive, as were the nodding heads of the premies who agreed with me but didn't have the confidence to speak up.

By 1990, I realized that IT, the magical moment when the human race would see the light, was NEVER going to happen, at the same time my involvement in the green movement meant I fully understood about global warming and the ozone hole problem. The scientific facts that backed up what I intuitively knew would be the human destruction of the planet in 1970, when I first tripped.

I went a bit crazy, walked out on my premie marriage, stopped all involvement around gm. Thankfully at a time of great despair for me the acid house revolution was happening in Britain. A total social change. This crowd taught me so much about that total hippy naivete.

I went to one gm festival in Brighton in 93-4, where I wore my headphones playing drum&bass all the time, to block out the bogusness of premie culture. Think the reasons I went, were a mixture of the return of despair for a short while, but really, to start trying to understand what the fuck was going on in gm's head. I saw through him completely much to my amazement.

Every year for three years, I would make one visit to a community video, to see how I viewed him during a period of large changes I was making. I primarily ended up looking at the language tricks and games he played, and the revisionism he used to cover his tracks. The communities at these events were tiny, soulless, immature, very sad.

98- on the net for the first time since 1990 and Ex-Premie org, at last a chance to verbalize what I had analysed and felt about this whole charade.

In the end what can you do, once you're past the pain of it all, and unless you sink yourself into another spiritual belief system to replace it like some spiritual neurofen, but utter a whole hearted gut bucketing laugh.

Our journey around him has been nothing but a mixture of some hippy monty python sketch mixed with kafka.

Without lila, and our acceptance of it, everyone would have been with the punks, laughing at the ludicrousness of it all.